Best new blogs 2002?

Quite so. I admit I'm not a regular blog reader at present, but Marcello was kind enough to mention that entry to me and I'm very glad I checked it.

my answer: spizzazzz

By the way why did so few people put their url in the user settings up to now? That's like a free advertisement for your blog...

Alex, thanks for the plug. Sorry my site design is "stone age" -- I've been meaning to tinker with it but other projects have consumed a lot of my time recently.

fluxblog has been interesting (esp. the non-music stuff), & general shouts to technicolor, land of a thousand dances, the compass & stevie nixed. probably not new, but I'm frequently checking up on joshblog, mochi manifesto, skykicking & hipster detritus.

sadly I have yet to find an aotearoa-tastic musicblog & will undoubtedly/foolishly start one.

you don't have to 'write up'. andrew L posted to report how it went so some 'quick words' would be nice.

I'm very impressed by Shazam! so far - some of the best writing I've seen this year, and thanks for the kind words David.

I'm off home to Glasgow for a week as of tomorrow for a much-needed break and will be away from computers, so CoM will be on holiday for a week, but I'm sure there's more than enough on there as it is to keep everyone going for now.

although the main reason I am going up to stay with my mum is because Sunday 25th will be the first anniversary of Laura's death, and it's a day when I will need to be in familiar surroundings, and most importantly not be alone.

I will definitely be writing something about Revolutionary Road on CoM when I get back next week. It's an astonishing book. The final two chapters are almost unbearable in their largely unspoken intensity - whose "death" is the greater?

One of the main ideas behind Stanley Spencer's original "church of me" was to celebrate and keep alive the spirit of his late wife. So it is with me, except in a way it is keeping both Laura's spirit and my own spirit alive.

Also, if not already done, pick up a copy of Robin Jenkins' "Just Duffy", as harrowing as RR, but possibly not as debilitating.

c.o.m.: obviously, which marcello already damn well knows.
fluxblog: which i don't have anything witty to say about, but is very solid.
the compass: which i will continue to berate ronan to keep up with.
shazam: which, although i'm often left wondering just what the hell david is talking about, is intriguing enough to keep me going back.
spizzazz: which is just brilliant in every way.

blogs which returned after an enforced absence:

vain selfish and lazy: fred's taste and mine are nothing alike, but i like fred. in fact i still <3 him, even.
land of a thousand dances: when i grow up i want to have mikey d's babies. 10,000 of them.

the rest are the ones i've been reading for a a year or more - josh, tim, andy k, popshots, nylpm (i'm not sure if this counts since i write for it), honda, mark s, starry, matos, maura, badger, (did wisdom goof start in 2001 or 2002?), gareth, nathalie...

blogs which need to return asap:

bleeding ears, in review...

i also have to say that, unsurprisingly, i agree with sterling. maybe it's just that recently we've been forced to look at more blogs outside of our little incestuous ghetto and they've always been around, but i'd rather strip the skin from my body and dip myself in lemon juice than read anymore about bitches, blowjobs (hah or the desperate attempt to procure them you feebs), and punk fukin rawk (or it's indie equivalent.) ditto: "rock myth" perpetuating, the presentation of aesthetics 101 concepts as springing fully formed from the head of athena, reactionary anti-pop rhetoric, defensive taste sloganeering, cod-professionalism, blah blah...

'I don't hate you, bobby'

'I was talking about soccer'

When it is orthodoxy and not heterodoxy.

is there something wrong with having a phd in ethnomusicology? or a hardon for abba? (obv there is something wrong with being greil marcus hahaha) or like not just asserting your preconceived notions like they're the law of the land? cuz like until you start thinking about that all you're going to get are tired 'rockists' from people sick of the endless streams of people who stumble upon ilm and think their old punk rock records are the greatest ever any anyone who doesn't think so is crazy or stupid.

Rough analogy -- early panthers had all sortsa shit towards women but then these were guys who never came from a place where women were respected and despite the problems women STILL got more respect in the panthers than anywhere else they'd been but then in the decline the old crap came back with a vengence and meanwhile since the WHOLE was valorized, the nastiness towards women in the panthers rather than being viewed as a process of tension transformed into something to either reject them wholesale with or valorize wholesale with them.

Sorta.

"The Clash are great. Fugazi are boring.

I'm not at liberty to say why. Or maybe I am but I don't feel like it. Maybe I assume it should be immediately obvious to even the most simple-minded individual. Why? Because it's a concrete fact. Clash=great, Fugazi=boring, end of discussion.

Think about that for a while. How did you react to those statements? Did you nod in agreement or roll your eyes or rush to your blog to post about how you are going to kick my ass for such blasphemy? Did you agree with both statements? Just the former? Just the latter? Neither? And in doing so, did you decide to appraise my musical taste, knowledge and mindset? Did you just up and say "this imbecile has no idea what real music is"?

That's what I've been contemplating lately re: music criticism and dialogue. I've wondered about why there's such a thing as a critical consensus and a canon, about why writers feel the way they do about music and choose to express it in such authoritative terms -- "Best Rock and Roll Band In America"; "The Future of Rock"; "[Band name] has come to save rock"; even "best album of the year" seems sort of meaningless to me. Should I believe Greil Marcus when anoints some record or another as a work of greatness when he curtly dismissed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (a record I admire, if not love) as a shoddy attempt at remaking Revolver? Should you give half a damn what I have to say after I called the band that changed your life "boring"?

No. But Greil and I and thousands upon thousands say it anyway because, and this is pure theory on my part, we don't really know or care who our audience is. There's different levels of commitment to this whole Pop Music Fandom thing and once you get past a certain level into one of the higher echelons most of it seems to be fairly solipsistic. "Here is the music I listened to today. Here is my opinion. Here are a stray fact or two, a comparison, an analogy and my final conclusion. I suppose you could call this opinion though I really think it should merely be inferred." Oh sure, I could go into great lengths as to why I thought the hypothetical Clash are great and why the hypothetical Fugazi are boring, but no amount of flowery prose or steely-gazed deconstruction are likely to sway you from your opinion. Even when a writer I like and agree with at least 75% of the time lets slip with a backhand or a curt dismissal of a song or an album or a band I've invested a lot of emotion in my distrust kicks in right away. Ben Hamper's Rivethead is one of the best works of non-fiction I've ever read and the story of his life on the assembly line is engaging as hell but that doesn't mean his dislike of Bruce Springsteen makes me want to toss out my E Street Shuffle LP.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it seems like a somewhat depressing exercise to exhibit one's musical tastes as a guide or an arbiter of anything whatsoever. I'm not an authority on pop music, even if I listen to it as often as possible during my waking life. I throw things at you and try to figure out what readers catch, what they drop, what they throw back (whether towards my hands or directly at my groin). Really, my taste shouldn't really count for that much. What should count is the potential for you to find something, anything that you like. Somewhere there is probably some reader who has stumbled across this blog and snorted in derision at some of the things I say, but then they run across some mention of a band somewhere that seems intriguing and somehow this asshole writer who has just shat on Ian MacKaye and placed some poser white-reggae punklets on a pedestal has by sheer luck managed to turn them on to their new favorite band."

i have always been a bit baffled by the amount some ppl pick on nate, but i am equally baffled that he lets it bother him so much when he's so obviously NOT guilty of most of the things they're against (like, er, "judging people by their taste")

Also I take back that "fucking despise" stuff. I'm not especially happy right now but I went a little overly hostile there and probably proved a point I didn't really want to.

(i'm still going with the former even if it results in people saying they fucking despise me.)

Why that line makes me smile, I don't know. It just does.

Fluxblahg is oh so poorly thought-out/written.

isn't it cute how all the fmbb stylee blogs are united in their a) command of touch and go catalog factoids, b) love for 'good writing' and hate for anything connected to FT and ILM, and c) misanthropy? I bet they have a treehouse where they smoke cigarettes they stole from mom's purse, too.

Seems pretty well-done to me. I really like his recent commentary regarding a particularly bad Stylus article on Jim O'Rourke:

Honest, maybe. Articulate, possibly. But certainly not rational - it's all vicious hyperbole, mindless bile aimed at a person who I really don't think is worth getting worked up about. I don't trust this guy at all, and his willingness to go along with the ridiculous notion that Sonic Youth are in an "obvious decline", or worse, that their work (or the simple fact that O'Rourke is now a member of the band) must be 'groundbreaking' is little more than sub-Amy Phillips anti-music drivel. For me, that would have automatically destroyed the writer's credibility, but the title "Jim O'Rourke: Fat, Soulless Fuck" already did that before I read the first sentence, especially since Jim O'Rourke is not a particularly fat man. I have no time for childish, fatphobic, bitter former music students, and I'm very irritated that I just wasted my time reading that article.

I think posts like Matthew's are crucial to the ultimate dismantling of the ignorant-lad-thug mentality that's responsible for so much bad music writing right now. That article was nothing more than a punchline, some invective, and a flaunting of one's credentials without any real demonstration of them. And I'm glad Matthew's calling bullshit.

Yeah, but the writer didn't say why or how these bands were cursed for working with O'Rourke, and if you're gonna attack a musician/producer and wave your music degree in his face, you'd better be prepared to at least describe what you mean instead of just tossing around insults. I appreciate the guy's honesty, but it's not enough to carry any kind of critical theory.

Yeah, but the really pertinent question is: does he hate ME? I mean, am I not fucking good enough or what?

As for the FMBB boys...aren't most of them bitter because Pizza Hut didn't think they had the social skills to become busboys?

out with it, nicole.

apparently p.r.f. guy, now unsurprisingly, is a crony of my old pal (and sometimes ilx poster...when someone needs to know precisely what type of vinyl a stooges reissue was pressed on and other burning issues) dr. funk, who has apparently just figured out that i'm a guy (which doesn't exactly win him the stoker award for solved mysteries 2002.) all i can say for the fmbb is that as bad as ilx may get, it will never be that.

(although in fairness, if it was anything, it would have been some sort of dom/sub thing where they could have called me a hack and smacked me with a riding crop.)

As for the FMBB, it does have its faults, but it's not nearly as bad as some here would suggest.

2. who are these ilm/ft hatas? i am confused. is it something to do with the indie guilt thread?

3. jess, do you and josh have like a fanclub of special hatas, i saw this site the other day, and it seemed to be entirely composed of stuff about you! it was a bit odd, what is that about?

4. how do you know if you have these people? do i have any? is it common? do you have to be american?

don't think its not obvious to many that there are many circles and subsets that have long been drawn and established within the ile massive. i admire nate's attempt to turn his (or anyone else's) blogging into a weirdly benevolent act ("you may disagree with me, but what *if* i turn you onto yr new fav. band?") but in the end, its just a smokescreen for the truth: we're *all* strangely bruised, narciscistic fuckwads who've chosen to pitch our tents in this camp because we feel music is what we know, or what we want to most know, or worse yet - the thing we feel most comfortable brandishing.

otoh, i think the fact that your writing deterioriated once you became aware that others were reading says loads.

mark s, please elaborate. i'm not sure who's hating on anyone right now.

hah, and you get it too, cf. doomie.

actually, these guys remind me a lot of doomie, in their way. get out and there feel it, man! except they never acknowledge the irony of posting these things to internet message boards or blogs.

mark p, i feel "specially implicated" because of: "otoh, i think the fact that your writing deterioriated once you became aware that others were reading says loads"! if all that you've gotten from this thread is that i "don't care", then you haven't been reading very hard.

hstencil, two words: indie guilt.

i never once said you didn't care! in fact, i think you do, deeply, abt lots of things. which is precisely why yr constant protestations (or couchings, hedgings, criticisms, whatever) to the opposite whiff (to me) of red herring.

mark, the other implication you're supposed to reach is that perhaps i'm a stable enough person to really not care what people who write other blogs think about me! (it's not as crazy as one might think!) it's not true, because a. i do like the odd compliment here and there (who doesn't) and b. i'm a bit like a rubbernecker when it comes to the haters. my writing never "deteriorated" when i became "aware" of my audience. it deteriorated (and that's a pretty loaded word) when i realized i had shifted focus in my writing towards an audience. it needed a break - an indefinite and possible permanent one - because i needed to rethink what it was i was trying to accomplish with it. mission accomplished (for the most part.) i do care, when someone is discussing something i've actually written or said. i don't care when someone is trying to hang a psychological dressing gown on me that doesn't fit, although it happens to fit their presupposed notion of why "we" do what we do.

mark (s) is right though: if i didn't want this stuff to be read by some people i wouldn't post it. i have plenty of notebooks, scratch paper, napkins, the palms of my hands, scribbled with ideas that no one will ever read because no one ever needs to read them. i continue to post in a public forum because i like the people i've met through ilx (well, some of them), and because i like the back and forth i get from them. i felt comfortable stopping writing for a while because the dialogue between us was enough. now that's deteriorated somewhat, i wanted to prod it again. so maybe, in some oblique way, i do fit yr profile. but at no point was i attempted to invent some "smokescreen for the 'truth'".

I'm working on a slow dial-up connection, so I can't use the search functionality here.

sometimes they are ways to practice writing daily, and also notes to oneself to check on later

often, an audience is accidental

Serious is the new fun, history programming is the new rock & roll, white is the new black, and red is not a color.

there's a difference.

(yes, i'm perfectly aware i'm stereotyping here, mistaking "one for the whole", whatever. but stereotypes exist for reasons, even wrong or misguided ones. i've yet to be proven wrong, and from the reactions of many people on this thread, i'm not alone. for people who like to stir up so much shit, they sure do get affronted when people "pick on them" don't "they"...)

maybe not directed at me, but it made me think of me.

and yeah, i think you did. but i forgive you anyway, snookums.

i may have to revise my statement above a little, but my basic line is: good writing is thinking...there's no such thing as "good thinking" (well, there is, but you know what i mean)...but a good piece of writing will involve some sort of thought motion on the part of the writer, whether it's asking questions or answering them or both or neither. yeah, it's kind of impossible to write without thinking, but it's certainly easier to write on auto-pilot of description, "this is what i did today" (lists are guilty signs, and i'm certainly guilty myself.) in the best writing, i think, that thought-motion becomes almost transparent within the writing itself; it's intrinsic to the way the writer works and acts and lives. the problem with blogs, i guess, is not that the academy has deemed the street irrelevant (which has long been the complaint against music writing, or at least "rock writing", which isnt what i think i do anyway), but that the street has won, declaring the academy irrelevant at the expense of exploring the most fertile ground: where the two intersect and become interlocked, untanglable.

I think I'm angry because I can't find new music I like because R&B is dying slowly and only Tweet rilly gets what should be saved from the 70s and the best music writing I've seen lately has been capule reviews in the issue of Stuff which my girlfriend bought me for the picture on the cover -- and they're so stupid it hurts my head to read them which I guess is sort of the point. And pre-Nirvana Indie is seeming more like a paradise lost especially Lou Barlow on "Gimmie Indie Rock" where he freaks out at the end and takes it up a notch.

Also I like Nate and don't want him to be the target of this slagging match and also I haven't written much lately and feel like I have neither anything to recommend or to say except that everything should fuck off and die and especially the FMBBers who remind me of the tall dudes with "rock" hair and nasty attitudes at a Palace show I went to.

I'm not that bad, am I?

jess re: jess hates david, i guess I just use it to try and bite my own ankles, guess I respect yr grumpyness ie see it as cynicality borne from livin' and thinkin (also, why I'm scared of sterling, oh and he called me shallow once, haha)... it's my own device, ok I did believe it had some tincture of truth but if I didnt then the ankle biter would have no teeth...

"a wise man once told me don't argue with fools/because people from a distance can't tell who is who."